index > Today's Earth, Our Future > 1. Water on our planet > Where Have All the Fish Gone?
 
Where Have All the Fish Gone?Catching fish from the sea seems like a very easy way to get food. To grow vegetables or fruit or other plants, you have to plant seeds, give them lots of water and apply fertilizer. To raise a farm animal, you have to feed it and take care of it everyday. But fish spawn (produce) eggs, feed and grow all by themselves. This makes fishing easy because it's almost like we have an "automatic fish-making machine" in the sea! If we were to catch fish bit by bit to avoid fishing too much, it might even be possible for this fish-making machine to last forever. But these days, people are so greedy that they catch too many fish, destroying our precious machine. If we don't change this behavior we'll lose all the fish forever! Here we have two big problems. One problem is that no matter how many fishing boats we make or no matter how great the fishing technology becomes, we cannot increase the number of fish in the sea. This is because there is a limit on how fast the fish population in the sea can grow. Basically, this limit is the number of fry (baby fish) in the sea that have time to grow up and have more fry to replace themselves. So, if we catch more than the limit, the fish population will continue to decrease. In fact, the population of some kinds of fish has already greatly been reduced and some fish have even disappeared forever! For example, the total "catch" (the amount of fish caught) of spotlined sardine in Japan in 1988 was the highest on record--5.4 million tons (one ton is equal to 1,000 kilograms or 2,200 pounds). Then in 1996 it began to lessen and fell to 400,000 tons. This was less than one-tenth of the amount caught in 1988. Around the East China Sea and the Sea of Japan in particular, the number of spotlined sardines is quickly decreasing. The total catch of spotlined sardine in this area was over one million tons in 1983 and stayed at this level until 1991. But it has been falling rapidly since then. It dropped to 41,000 tons in 1999, 7,800 tons in 2000 and to 1,400 tons in 2001. This is worrisome, isn't it? Sardines were once a popular food among Japanese people because they are nutritious and not so expensive. The other problem is that the world's population of humans is increasing while the number of fish in the sea is not. What do you think will happen if the number of people who want fish increases, but the number of fish stays the same? Over one billion people in the world eat fish as part of their daily meal. Most of them live in developing countries, particularly in the countries with the least amount of money. In some places, people practice something called "aquaculture". Aquaculture is like raising fish on a farm instead of catching them from the ocean. But to do aquaculture, it takes a lot of energy and fish food to make the fish grow. So, if the amount of fish being caught shrinks so much that we cannot make up for it with fish from aquaculture farms, the price for fish will naturally go up. For people who cannot afford meat and get their nutrition from fish, the decline in fish catches and the rising prices will become a matter of life-or-death. Oceans, fish and people are all going to be in trouble if we continue over-fishing.
(Q&A) Question: In Japan, for instance, what kinds of efforts are being made to conserve fish?
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   1. Water on our planet
   
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